DraftWork

mayfield brooks

Danspace Project pays respect to Lenape peoples. We acknowledge that this work is situated on the Lenape island of Manhahtaan (Mannahatta) in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. We pay respect to Lenape land, water, and ancestors past, present, and future.

Danspace Project Presents

DraftWork
mayfield brooks

Saturday, April 29, 2023
3pm

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, DraftWork hosts free, informal showings of new works in varying stages of development.

Join us after the showing for a reception, conversation, and Q&A between the artist and Danspace Program Director & Associate Curator, Seta Morton.

Whale Fall Part 3
Entanglement: Touch My Hair Gently
Performed by mayfield brooks, Dorothy Carlos, galle, Camilo Restrepo

I thank my human and non-human ancestors. I thank the whales and the land that becomes the ocean floor. I thank all of the folks who have been a part of the Whale Fall Part 3 entanglement process; especially Duskin Drum, Chagua Camacho-Olguin, Makisig Akin, Anya Cloud, Mesiah, Malcolm-x Betts, Juan Viveros, Frank Kuzler and Jen Larkin Kuzler from Decades Out, Sidony O'neal and many others who have blessed my life during this process. Special thanks to everyone at Danspace, performers--Camilo, galle & Dorothy and Ishmael Houston Jones for nurturing DraftWork all these years.

mayfield brooks is grateful. they are based in Lenapehoking, the unceded land of  the Lenape people, also known as Brooklyn, New York. brooks is a movement-based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, writer, and wanderer who teaches and performs practices that arise from Improvising While Black (IWB), their interdisciplinary dance methodology exploring the decomposed matter of Black life. IWB engages in dance improvisation, disorientation, dissent, and ancestral healing. brooks is the 2021 recipient of the biennial Merce Cunningham Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a 2021 Bessie/New York Dance and Performance Award nominee for their experimental dance film, Whale Fall, a 2022 Danspace Project Platform artist and a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. 

Dorothy Carlos is an experimental cellist and electronic musician working in New York City and Chicago. Her work utilizes programmed electronics and randomized effect pedals to explore fragility and unpredictability.

galle is a queer refugee immigrant, artist and tattooer based in Brooklyn. "as a queer trans indigenous person, through tattooing on my body, i'm reclaiming my body as the sovereign land of my dreams. my body is my paraísa."

Camilo Restrepo is a designer and artist, a mystical, sensitive, creative, bohemian and adventurous being. He is concerned about the expansion of sensitivity and imagination as a tool for connection and co-creation.

Ishmael Houston-Jones is an award winning choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York, across the US, and in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Drawn to collaborations as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation. Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a 1984 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, which reintroduced the erased narrative of the Black cowboy back into the mythology of the American west. He was awarded his second “Bessie” Award for the 2010 revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane. In 2017 he received a third “Bessie” for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other Works by John Bernd. In 2020 he received a fourth "Bessie" for Service to the Field of Dance. Houston-Jones is the DraftWork curator for works-in-progress at Danspace Project in New York. He has curated Platform 2012: Parallels which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now both at Danspace Project. As an author Houston-Jones' essays, fiction, interviews, and performance texts have been published in several anthologies and in numerous journals and magazines. His FAT and Other Stories: Some Writing About Sex was published in June 2018 by Yonkers International Press. Ishmael Houston-Jones sits on the Board of Directors of Movement Research and Performance Space New York and is a member of Middle Collegiate Church and Dias y Flores Community Garden. He has received awards from The Herb Alpert Foundation, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts and The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. In 2022 he received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Ishmael Houston-Jones received the 2019 Edwin Booth Award, given annually by the Doctoral Theatre Students’ Association of City University of New York which honors “an individual or organization that has had a significant impact on theatre and performance in New York.”

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SUPPORT FOR DRAFTWORK

DraftWork is presented, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

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DANSPACE PROJECT COMMUNITY GUIDELINES
At Danspace Project, we value people, connections, inquiry, listening, adaptability, and equity. 
These values can only be upheld when respect, care, and safety are practiced.
Please use this guide to help prioritize the safety of the physical and virtual spaces in which we gather. 

Please click here to view our Community Guidelines

ACCESSIBILITY AT DANSPACE PROJECT
Please click here for more information on Accessibility in our space 

COVID SAFETY
All guests and staff must wear a surgical face-mask while inside Danspace Project (KN95 or N95 recommended).

Please click here for more information on Covid Safety in our space

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ABOUT DANSPACE PROJECT
Danspace Project presents new work in dance, supports a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work, encourages experimentation, and connects artists to audiences.

For almost 50  years, Danspace Project has supported a vital community of contemporary dance artists in an environment unlike any other in the United States. Located in the historic St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Danspace shares its facility with the Church, The Poetry Project, and New York Theatre Ballet. Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned over 570 new works since its inception in 1994.

Since 2010, we have produced fourteen Platforms, published fourteen print catalogues and five e-books, launched the Conversations Without Walls discussion series, and explored models for public discourse and residencies.

Danspace Project Values Statement

Staff
Executive Director & Chief Curator: Judy Hussie-Taylor
Deputy Director: Jodi Bender
Communications Director: Lily Cohen
Development & Communications Manager: Severine Kaufman
Program Director/Associate Curator: Seta Morton
Director of Development: Tricia Pierson
Program & Operations Manager: Rosaly Ruiz
Grants Manager: Nora Thompson
Production Manager: Niko Tsocanos
House Managers: Jordan Morley & Emily C. Wong
Box Office Managers: Niala, Antonio Irizarry, Ella Wasserman Smith

Consultants & Special Projects
Lighting Designers: Kathy Kaufmann & Carol Mullins
DraftWork Curator: Ishmael Houston-Jones
House Photographer: Ian Douglas

Board of Directors
President: Melissa Levin
Vice President: David Parker
Secretary: Rashaun Mitchell
Treasurer: Judilee Reed
Officer-at-Large: Anthony Calnek
Officer-at-Large: Helen Warwick
Yona Backer
Suzanne Bocanegra
Trisha Brown, In Memoriam, 2006-2017
Douglas Dunn, Emeritus
David Fanger
Ishmael Houston-Jones, Emeritus
Judy Hussie-Taylor
Thomas Lax
Ralph Lemon, Emeritus
Bebe Miller, Emeritus
Sam Miller, In Memoriam, 2013-2018
Sarah Needham
Eiko Otake
Nina Winthrop

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THANKS TO OUR FUNDERS
Danspace Project gratefully acknowledges the private support of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters ArtsForward Program, made possible through support from the Mellon Foundation; The Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts; The Barbara Bell Cumming Charitable Trust; The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; Howard Gilman Foundation; The Harkness Foundation for Dance; Marta Heflin Foundation; Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities​​; Jerome Foundation; Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of the Tides Foundation; the Mellon Foundation; Mertz Gilmore Foundation; The New York Community Trust—George N. and Mary D. Lindsay Fund; Jerome Robbins Foundation; James E. Robison Foundation; The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc.; The Shubert Foundation; and the Henry Luce Foundation, the Teiger Foundation, and Willem de Kooning Foundation, through the Coalition of Small Arts.

Danspace Project programs are made possible in part through public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; the NYS DanceForce (a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature); and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Danspace Project extends special thanks to City Council members including Cultural Affairs Committee Chair Chi Ossé, District 2 representative Carlina Rivera, and Speaker Adrienne E. Adams; New York State Senator Brad Hoylman, and State Assembly Member Deborah J. Glick for their advocacy and support; as well as gratitude for Senator Charles E. Schumer’s visionary leadership of the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program.

Danspace Project receives additional support from Ford Foundation, Moody’s Foundation, and The William Penn Foundation through matching gift programs. 

Special thanks to the following supporters for their generosity in many forms throughout the years: Elise Bernhardt and fleur elise bkln, the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust, Ozone Design, and Ugly Duckling Presse.

DANSPACE PROJECT GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES OUR INDIVIDUAL DONORS

Leadership Supporters: Jody & John Arnhold, Yona Backer*, Suzanne Bocanegra* & David Lang, Carol Bryce-Buchanan, Anthony Calnek* & Linda Sugin, Barbara Bertozzi Castelli, David L. Fanger & Martin Wechsler, Vallejo Gantner, Judy Hussie-Taylor*, Thomas J. Lax* & Andrew Wallace, Melissa Levin*, Carol LeWitt, Frances Milberg, Timothy & Virginia Millhiser, Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Riener, Sarah Needham*, Eiko Otake*, David Parker*, Jana Reed, Judilee Reed*, Sara Rudner, Martha Sherman, Linda Stein, Pat Steir, Christina L. Sterner & Steve Poses, Helen* & Peter Warwick, Nina Winthrop*, David & Monica Zwirner

Danspace Project would like to acknowledge the generosity of former Board member and ongoing Leadership Supporter Terry Creach, who passed away suddenly last fall. Our heartfelt gratitude for his support of Danspace, in many ways, for many years.

$5,000+ Michelle Coffey, Diana DiMenna, Becky Goldring, Colleen Keegan

$1,000+ Jody Oberfelder, Muna Tseng, Lucy Vasserman, Sarah Arison, Paul Bader, Niki Berg, Julio Cabanillas, Kim Chan, Sara Coffey, Aidan Connolly, Paula Cooper, Katie Dixon, Hilary Easton & Joshua McHugh, Jane Hait, Pearl Huang, Mara Isaacs, Chui Lim Tsang, Pat Matthews, Amy Schwartzman, Kimberly Ayers Shariff, Joseph S. & Diane H. Steinberg, Kenneth Tabachnick, Anthony Zisa

$500+ Lillian Cho, Jane Comfort, Rachel Cooper, Donald L. Creach, Jacqueline Z. Davis, Kamilah Forbes, Boo Froebel, Kathy Halbreich, Philip Himberg, Elise Jaffe, Brad Learmonth, Elizabeth Liguori, Kitty Lung, Cynthia Mayeda, Joseph V. Melillo, Jana Reed, Yancey Richardson, Mark Russell, Miranda Schiller, David Sheingold, Linda Shelton, C. Adair Smith, Crispy Soloperto, Allan Sperling, Elise Thoron, Lisa Yancey, Jenny Yee

$250+ Philip Bither, Carol Bryce-Buchanan, Amy Cassello, Phyllis Fanger, Susan Feder, Robert Flynt, Kennis Hawkins, Robert Henderson, Cristina King Miranda, Donald Kursch, Zoe Leonard, Esther McGowan, Anne B. Miller, maura nguyën donohue, Madeleine Nichols, Alessandra Nicifero, Derek Sands, Carrie Schneider, David Thomson, Kay Turner, Jennifer Wright Cook

$100+ Martita Abril, Myriam Barenbaum, Roslyn Biskin, Tiffany Brathwaite, Art Bridgman, Travis Chamberlain, Nora Chavooshian, Peggy Cheng & Christopher Morrow, Ping Chong, Jean Cook, Nancy Dalva, Gail Donnenfeld, Toni Dorfman, Susan Dowling-Griffiths, Douglas Dunn, Ruth Eisenberg, Peter Eisenhauer, Molissa Fenley, Melanie George, Michal Ginach, Sheri & Robert Gold, Abby Harris Holmes, Christopher Hibma, Huong Hoang, Stephen Hoffman, Sarah Hooker, Daonne Huff, Ethan Kaufman, Jennifer Kessler, Katinka Kleijn, Marion Koltun, Phyllis Lamhut, Susan Marshall, Daniel Mauk, Brian McCormick, Lisa Nelson, Claudia Norman, Tere O’Connor_, Morgan Pecelli, Tricia Pierson, Seemin Qayum, Liz & Kirk Radke, Alexandra Ripp, Davison Scandrett, Elizabeth Schwartz, Diego Segalini, Vicky Shick, Janet Stapleton, Lena Stringari, Erica Sweany, Linnaea Tillett, Richard Tsao, Laurie Uprichard, Aynsley Vandenbroucke, Eleanor Wallace, Gwen Welliver, Marya Wethers, Bruce Williams, James Wright

As of 2/22/23

*Danspace Project Board member